


Bad Timing

by KittyGodspeed118



Category: Game Grumps, Good Game - Fandom, Youtube Red - Fandom
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Good Game, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27772312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyGodspeed118/pseuds/KittyGodspeed118
Summary: Ryland and Alex try to go about their lives as if they haven’t been slowly figuring out they’re in love with each other. With some unlikely help, they finally figure their shit out.
Relationships: Ash Donovan x Ryland Tate, Ash Donovan/Ryland, Ryland Tate x Alex Taylor, Ryland/Alex Taylor (Good Game), rylex - Relationship
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Bad Timing

**Author's Note:**

> Just finished rewatching Good Game for the millionth time and I just really needed to write this! Please feel free to leave feedback.

Alex paced around the apartment, pausing every so often to pull his phone out of his back pocket to check his notifications. He knew his phone would vibrate when Ryland responded but Alex was nervous enough to check for a sixth time just to be sure. He unlocked his phone just to look at their conversation again.

Alex: Hey when r u coming home? (1:00 PM)

Ry💕💕💕💕: Idk why (2:03 PM)

Alex: Just wondering lol I gotta ask you something (2:06 PM)  
Alex: Nothing serious! (2:07 PM)  
Alex: I just need to ask you for your opinion (2:07 PM)

Ry💕💕💕💕: Okay? U can ask me rn (3:12 PM)

Alex: Nah I’d rather talk about it in person, it’s a lot (3:15 PM)

He slid his phone back in his pocket and continued pacing. It was now 10 PM and Ryland still hadn’t come back yet. Alex felt his hands grow increasingly clammy as he cracked his knuckles to stim. Why was he so nervous? He and Ryland have been friends for years now. He was almost positive that nothing could change that...but this confession could change everything. 

“I just won’t say anything. I’ll just tell him it’s nothing,” Alex reasoned to himself quietly. 

There were voices outside the door as Alex debated getting a drink and in a panic, he ducked into the Ryland’s room. He heard Ryland and...someone else, someone feminine with him. Ash. That was definitely Ash’s laugh. 

“Wait, wait, shh…” Ryland murmured, stifling a drunken chuckle. “I don’t know if Alex is home yet-“

“What’s he gonna do? Ground you for missing dinner?” Ash laughed, covering her own mouth sloppily. “Lighten up!”

“It’s not like that, asshole, I just don’t wanna make things awkward, okay?”

Ash merely shrugged, not bothering to delve into something she knew wasn’t her business. She was far too trashed to even consider dissecting Ryland and Alex’s borderline homoerotic relationship. For a moment, though, she hoped whatever happened would stay between her and Ryland...if anything were to happen, that is. Which, it totally wouldn’t. After all, she didn’t want to ruin anyone’s relationship. She just wanted to have some harmless fun and she trusted him more than anyone else these days.

They stumbled to the couch and flopped against each other, making themselves laugh again. They’d been drinking since 5:30 and Ryland could feel his body grow heavy on the couch as the liquor caught up to him. Ash really was beautiful...and he was fast forgetting how to act around her in this drunken haze.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Ash reassured, leaning her head against his broad shoulder. 

“Good. Great. I don’t wanna talk about it,” Ryland grumbled. 

There was a short, odd pause as Ash sat up to look at him head- on. He’d let his hair down moments ago and it made him a lot cuter to her...for some reason. She’d never really spent much time staring at him but the dim lighting from the apartment window and the alcohol just made it make sense. They looked at each other, eyes desperately attempting to focus. 

“Don’t make it weird, but you should wear your hair down more often,” Ash observed, threading her fingers through his silky hair. 

Ryland melted into her hands, suddenly so aware of how touch-starved he was. His breathing was labored as he pressed his face against her other hand. He peered up at her after another prolonged silence, gladly too distracted to think about how long it’d been since he’d let anyone but Alex touch him. 

“I’m glad you like it,” he murmured absently, as if in a trance. 

“It just does something for your face, I dunno,” Ash continued on, cupping his face in her hands. 

“Two compliments in a row from the notorious Ash2Dust? Don’t start spoiling me now, I might build some semblance of self-esteem.”

“Ugh, stop that!”

“Stop what?”

“You do this….this thing where you act like you’re ugly or gross when you just fucking need therapy.”

“I’ll go if you go,” Ryland quipped, only half kidding.

Ash genuinely considered it for a moment, only superficially enough to laugh off the notion five seconds later. Ryland laughed too. Therapy was difficult and more than that, it was expensive. Booze and bad decisions were cheap if a person knew how to do them right. 

She leaned forward on one hand, her balance shoddy at best. Her other hand gripped the top of the dingy couch. Ryland leaned back against the left arm of the couch, resigning himself to whatever happened next. At least if he let her make the first move, he wouldn’t feel like he was being too forward. Ash hovered over him, silently assessing if she was drunk enough to muddy the boundaries they never set with each other. Hell, she was planning on leaving the team in mere hours anyway, right?

“Don’t make this a thing,” she ordered, her eyes like sapphires in the moonlight. “Okay?”

“Y-yeah, yeah, I don’t want to make this...anything.”

She nodded, first pecking his lips slightly, then kissing him with a deep, drunken want that had been nagging at her for the last two hours. Ryland, hesitant at first, cupped her face with one large hand and poised the other on her hip. He furrowed his dark eyebrows, not sure why it felt like he was breaking some sort of unspoken law. That wasn’t enough to stop him, but he definitely made a mental note to bury it deep in his subconscious where even he couldn’t further dissect it. 

Blackness. 

Ryland woke with a start, feeling his body to make sure he was, in fact, in the reality he believed himself to be. There was still a tiny part of him that felt stuck between the fickle lines of reality and dream. He opened his eyes, immediately squinting as they met the harsh midday sunlight. Then, suddenly, he remembered. 

“Shit,” he murmured, forcing himself to sit up. “Alex…? Ash?”

He rolled onto his side and grabbed his phone from the cluttered coffee table. He unlocked the phone, completely unsure as to why there were no texts or voicemails from Alex. Strange. Normally, if he was going to leave before Ryland woke up, he made sure the text at least twice to ask if he needed anything or wanted to hang out later. Stranger still, Ryland couldn’t even remember if Alex came home the night before. 

Did Alex know? Ryland violently shook his head as if to dislodge the thought from his mind. It wasn’t his business anyhow. 

It was 2:45 in the afternoon. Ryland groaned as he finally peeled himself from the couch. Maybe a shower would help him figure out why the fuck he felt so gross. The hangover wasn’t shit compared to the overwhelming weight in his chest. He pulled his t-shirt over his head and tossed it into the overflowing laundry basket on the couch closest to the bathroom. Hopefully, if he scalded himself with hot water for 10 minutes, he’d be out of his funk or burned to death.

Meanwhile, Alex sat at the greasy bar he found himself in almost every week. Steamin’s catalogue model girlfriend, Kathryn, managed to sneak her way into his thoughts and he did something he rarely ever did: Crammed his feelings way down deep in his gut and hoped they’d go away. 

“...so then I was like ‘Christy, we’re gonna be late for hot yoga!’ And she was all ‘I do coffee enemas on Mondays now’? Like, what? You know what I mean?”

“Totally,” Alex retorted absently as he took another sip of his appletini. “What’s an enema? Also, follow-up question: What’s hot yoga?”

Kathryn huffed, but launched into a lengthy explanation of gentrified yoga and anal coffee insertion. Her words faded in and out of Alex’s ears as he stared into her blue eyes. She was gorgeous. 

“Anyway, why don’t we get out of here and head back to my place?”

“Don’t you...live with Steamin’?”

“So?”

Alex’s eyebrows furrowed as he slowly rose from his bar stool. Kathryn was enchanting to say the least, but he was distracted whenever he looked at her. He knew exactly what was eating at him and he refused to acknowledge it after last night. 

“You know what? Fuck it. Let’s go back to your place,” he finally declared, after shaking himself from his haze. 

He remembered very little about the Uber ride to Steamin’s dope-ass penthouse. Alex had to admit it was a stellar place, but he absolutely kept his glowing review to himself. Steamin’ thought Alex was a friend, or at least a gateway to ruining Ryland’s life...and for the moment, Alex was far too nice to outwardly call Steamin’ a soggy bag of dicks. For now, revenge took the form of making out with his girlfriend and using his drugs.

“Shit, where did that asshole put my pipe?” Kathryn asked as she tossed her expensive bolero jacket onto one of the many bean bag chairs in the lounge area. “If you see a peach-shaped pipe, let me know, okay, Andy?”

“My name’s Alex, but I appreciate the nickname,” he replied cheerfully, taking in the near immaculate penthouse. 

“Steamin’s upstairs if you wanna go make out in front of him.”

Alex, though visibly confused, followed her up the winding staircase. He prayed it was just an awkward joke and not a request disguised as a suggestion. Kathryn led him to a bedroom left of the stairway and opened the door. The lanky man threw himself onto the red crushed velvet-covered bed, sinking into the expensive memory foam mattress. 

“So, don’t take this the wrong way but Steamin’ just left and my vibe is kinda harshed now. It’s only hot if he has to watch us,” Kathryn grumbled, climbing onto the bed next to Alex. “We can still smoke though.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s totally cool. I respect your bodily autonomy and shit.”

“Ohh, I get what this is. It’s about your weird boyfriend, isn’t it?”

“What? Ryland isn’t- I mean, we aren’t...don’t get me wrong. He’s handsome and all, but he and I aren’t anything right now. Do I seem like I have a boyfriend? You and I have literally made out before.”

“I was talking about the old dude who pays for all your stuff, but that makes more sense,” Kathryn went on, holding out a lighter and a fragile-looking pink glass bong. “I don’t judge. I’m the most open-minded person I know.”

Alex immediately took the bong and held the lighter to it. His body relaxed almost instantly as he inhaled. The pull was deeper than he thought it was and he coughed.

“You can take another rip, y’know, for clarity or whatever.” 

“You’re a goddess.”

When Alex was sufficiently high, he flopped back onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. There were hypnotic golden Gucci logos painted on it and he found himself lost in the pattern.The only thing that brought him out of his haze was the sudden buzzing of his phone.

“It’s Ryan, isn’t it? Let me see,” Kathryn insisted as Alex fished his phone out of his back pocket. 

Ry💕💕💕💕: Are you gonna be back soon? (4:12)

Alex’s heart practically slammed into his rib cage as he tried to think of how to respond. He stared at the screen, clicking a couple letters and then swiftly deleting them before he could get a sentence out. Kathryn snatched his phone and held out her arm to keep him at bay.

Alex: On my way home rn, what’s good?

“What did you say?” Alex inquired, only semi-panicked. “Is he typing? I completely trust your judgment, by the way, I’m just...y’know.”

She finally handed the phone back to him, satisfied with her work. 

Ry💕💕💕💕: I need to talk (4:15)  
Ry💕💕💕💕: Kinda losing my shit (4:16)

“Ryland never double-texts me….I think I need to go. He might’ve gotten his hand stuck in the kitchen sink again...Uh, thanks for smoking me out and getting drinks with me. Maybe we can do this again sometime?”

“Alan, you’re great and all but you’re like a puppy dog and your inability to be brutally honest with people kind of bothers me.”

“Right...that makes sense.”

Kathryn peered up at him, her face flushing as she caught his dejected gaze. He looked more like a dumb shepherd puppy than a man. She rolled her eyes and parted the wild curls from his face.

“How about this: If you and your boy toy work things out and you don’t become a total housewife, you can buy me a drink next time we run into each other?”

Alex looked up and grinned, pulling her into a bone-crushing hug. He might’ve been crying. 

“Now go before the Uber driver gets pissy. He’s already outside so move your ass.”

The drive from the mansion back to the shitty apartment was a blur. He kept switching his gaze from the window to his phone. He bit his bottom lip and anxiously twisted a strand of curly brown hair around his bony index finger. When he finally got home, he stood outside the apartment door for a moment, taking one last deep breath because he absolutely knew he’d forget to breathe once he even looked at Ryland.

Ryland heard the key in the door and debated whether or not it was even worth putting pants on. He’d been in the shower so long that his body felt numb and his hair was still far from dry. 

“Hey, man, you here?”

“On the couch,” Ryland groaned, melting further into the dingy tan cushions. 

“You alright? You seemed fucked up when you texted me and-“

“Look, can we just not do this? Can we skip the part where you pretend you’re not pissed off at me and just get to the part where you yell at me?”

Alex slowly closed the door behind him and furrowed his eyebrows. Ryland stood up and they faced each other in silence for what felt like a minuscule eternity.

“I think you and I both know I fucked up and I just need you to yell at me and tell me what a piece of shit I am for never doing anything or trying to move forward.”

“Ry-“

“No! Just say what you really think about me, okay? You know I made out with Ash last night and I know you know because you always fucking know. Just call me a coward or a dick and just tell me you’re moving out!”

“Woah, woah, hey, you need to slow down. I’m not gonna yell at you,” Alex soothed, moving down the stairs so there was less distance between them. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I feel like I fucked up and I don’t know why I feel like such a bastard…”

“That’s bullshit.”

“What?”

“Why are we dancing around this like we don’t both know what this is? Ryland, you felt like shit because you felt like you were cheating on me.”

Ryland made a face and felt the argument cling to his tongue. There was no way that made sense. Alex was only ever this blunt with him and yet, it was still incredibly jarring to hear. Ryland rubbed his eyes roughly as if trying to wipe away any thoughts that materialized. There’s no way he was in love with his best friend.

“I need to dry my hair,” he protested weakly as he aimlessly searched for a towel.

“Can we talk about this? My high is wearing off and it feels like I’m wearing a big ol’ feelings sweater that fucking sucks to wear.”

Ryland shook his head, already too overwhelmed with several emotions without adding Alex’s deer-in-headlights eyes to the mix. He bolted into the bathroom and turned on the hairdryer. 

“Just listen to what I have to say and if you want me to become a French hobo after that, then fine!” Alex yelled.

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU,” Ryland shouted back as he yanked a brush through his hair. “WHAT DID YOU SAY?!”

“I’M TRYING TO TELL YOU-“

Ryland finally turned off the hairdryer just in time.

“I FUCKING LOVE YOU….and I really wish you didn’t turn that off right then.” Alex muttered halfway through, running his hands through his wild hair. “Look, man, I’m not trying to do anything crazy, but I’m sick of living together and pretending we don’t see shit that we can’t ignore.”

Ryland stared at Alex through the tiny, cracked bathroom mirror. More than anything, he was terrified. Alex let out a labored sigh and sat down in the dingy bathtub. 

“I know that your whole thing is acting like you don’t give a shit and I know you’re trying really hard to act like nothing I’m saying matters. But more than that, I know that you feel the same way about me, because you’re still standing here in your fucking underwear and listening to me.”

“Honestly, Alex, I fucking hate you. I think you’re a freeloader with stupid hair and dumb brown eyes and...and...fuck you. Like, that’s where I’m at right now. I’m at the intersection of I’m Gonna Vomit Lane and Fuck You Avenue.”

“You should shut up a little bit.”

Alex got up and pulled Ryland into a giant hug. It was the type of hug that a person could melt into and stay in for hours. Ryland closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around Alex, letting his hands rove from the small of his back to the deep back pockets of Alex’s red shorts.

“I don’t have to be your boyfriend, but I lose my shit whenever I think about kissing you.” Alex murmured, pressing his lips against Ryland’s neck. “And that’s all we need to worry about right now.”

“Stop talking,” Ryland grumbled, his face fully flushed as Alex breathed against it. 

“What am I gonna do with all these emotions,” Alex purred, between smaller kisses on Ryland’s left collarbone.

“Going, I’m going now. You made it weird.”

“Can we snuggle later?”

“I’m not answering you.”

“Okay, that’s cool! I’m gonna put on my fuzzy snuggle socks just in case, though.”

“Ignoring you now!”

Ryland begrudgingly dug around his drawers for his own pair of fuzzy socks, but definitely not so he and Alex could match.


End file.
